Binyamin Rose: Back to the Bunker: How a life-risking act by a Christian family during the Holocaust saved a family and built a thriving community a world away
Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
Emily Brandon: 10 Necessities for a Great Retirement Spot
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen: These homemade energy bars (3 recipes) are far better workout fuel than commercial ones, packing power and taste
February 6, 2012
Scott Peterson: Iran's top ayatollah: We're trumping the West
Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Lisa M. Krieger: Possible breakthrough in preventing Alzheimer's
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
Susan Johnston: 5 Apps for Organizing Your Expenses at Tax Time
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The famed chef's Broccoli and White Bean Soup can easily be a lunch in itself, or a nice antipasto --- and is hard to mess up
January 31, 2012
Paul Greenberg: Separation of Church and State works two ways
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
Menachem Wecker: 3 Do's and Don'ts for Healthy Studying in College
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen: Eleventh-Hour Freezer Pasta, Made Interesting: Ravioli with romesco sauce; Tortellini salad with apples and walnuts
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
A Film Unfinished: The Warsaw Ghetto As Seen Through Nazi Eyes
By
Richard Z. Chesnoff
A Nazi propaganda film is finally being screened worldwide --- more than half-century after being shot. A 31 year-old Israeli is responsible
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Aside from Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, nothing epitomizes the horrors of the Holocaust more than the infamous Warsaw Ghetto.
Surrounded by a barbed wire topped 10 foot high brick wall, it was into this tiny corner of the Polish capital that the Nazis herded up to 400,000 Jewish prisoners at a time; systematically starving them with barely 181 calories of rations per day, leaving them to die of hunger or disease or simply leaving them to languish while they unknowingly awaited shipment to Hitler's gas chambers.
It was here too that in the spring of 1943, a small band of heroic Jewish fighters launched a desperate uprising against their Nazis captors, a battle that ended only when the overwhelmingly powerful German forces leveled the ghetto and reduced it to rubble.
Yet barely a year before, In May 1942 -- two and half years after the Warsaw Ghetto was established and shortly before the Nazis sent the Ghetto's first 300,000 Jews to the extermination camp of Treblinka -- the Reich dispatched a crew of German soldiers to film Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Their perverse propaganda goal: to record for posterity examples of the religious practices and "sub-human culture" of the soon to be eliminated judische Rasse, everything from a circumcision ceremony to a burial service; from the extreme poverty of the many to the supposed lack of concern of those few Jews who still had some assets.
Parts of this nefarious Nazi propaganda film were heart wrenchingly real; the Nazis had no compunction about showing Jews suffering. But other parts of it were carefully staged, a German Potemkin Village movie honed for propaganda and construed to discredit the Jews.
Horrifying snippets of it have appeared over the years: a starving child dying on the streets of the Ghetto while other Jews walk by or still others dine on meals at well stocked restaurants that never existed' Nazi appointed Jewish Ghetto police brutalizing fellow Jews.
Yet mysteriously the Nazis' propaganda film was never finished. For more than 50 years, the silent, unedited reels lay hidden in a secret East German film archive in boxes marked simply, "The Ghetto."
Then along came Yael Hersonski, a young Israeli documentary maker whose own grandmother had survived the Warsaw Ghetto. After gaining access to the long abandoned footage via the current German government, Hersonski wrote and directed A Film Unfinished, a staggering 90 minute documentary of the atrocities of life in the Warsaw Ghetto as filmed by the Nazis themselves. It is presented in America by the New York distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories .
Two-thirds of the 31 year old Hersonski's film consists of the original Nazi propaganda footage - including out-takes. The rest is comprised in part of the wrinkled faces of a handful of Warsaw ghetto survivors grimly watching an actual screening of the film and offering commentary (some clearly remember the Wermacht cameramen at work). Using an actor, Hersonski has also re-enacted the actual post-war testimony of one of the film's original German cameramen (now deceased).
But in this viewer's mind, the most fascinating parts of the unfinished film are its out-takes which at times clearly show the cameramen themselves caught in the shot or demonstrate how scenes were staged, then re-shot to produce a "better" anti-Semitic result.
A Film Unfinished has already won well deserved international plaudits It was the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Winner for World Cinema Documentary Editing, the 2010 Hot Docs Winner for Best International Feature and a prime selection at Germany's 2010 Berlinale.
Hersonski's "A Film Unfinished" opens today 18th in New York at The Film Forum (209 W. Houston Street) and Lincoln Plaza (1886 Broadway), on August 20th It premieres in Los Angeles at The Laemmle Royal and in Encino, California at Laemmle Town Center. This will be followed by a national run of the film.
For some obscure reason, the Motion Picture Association of America - which lets our youth be bombarded by meaningless entertainment and violence - has decided to give A Film Unfinished an R rating because of "disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities, including graphic nudity," the latter in a Nazi-coerced scene of young women in a ritual bath.
The rating, which prevents anyone under 17 from watching the film unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian, will not block the commercial screening of the film. But it will prevent the film from being shown in high school classes as an educational tool, to the particular disappointment of its creator Yael Hersonski who looks barely 17 herself and says she made it "not only for now but for future generations."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Interested in a private Judaic studies instructor — for free? Let us know by clicking here.
JWR contributor and veteran journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff was Senior Correspondent at US News & World Report, and is now a columnist at the NY Daily News and the Huffington Post. A two-time winner of the Overseas Press Club Award and a recipient of the National Press Club Award, he was formerly executive editor of Newsweek International. The paperback edition of his critically acclaimed book, "Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe Plundered the Jews & Committed the Greatest Theft in History" is now on sale. (Click on cover above to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.
